


ni moi sans vous, ni vous sans moi

by unicorns



Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Fourth Age, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-09
Updated: 2015-02-09
Packaged: 2018-03-11 06:48:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,571
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3317975
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unicorns/pseuds/unicorns
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The ten days before Ereinion Gil-galad ceded to the inevitable and accomplished what Círdan would not.</p>
            </blockquote>





	ni moi sans vous, ni vous sans moi

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Talullah](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Talullah/gifts).



There were more buildings than Ereinion had originally envisioned, if he had ever bothered to envision Valinor beyond one or two halfhearted, meandering daydreams in his youth. Quite densely packed together, too, like any proper, nigh-overpopulated city—and perhaps closer than Námo might have liked, if the severe-looking gate around the glorified night-inn the former High-King of the Noldor of Middle-Earth had been unceremoniously ejected from only a day or so prior was anything to go by. It was a big, staid, reinforced iron affair that he found comfortingly in line with his still very Noldorin sensibilities, meant to keep the sleepers in and the deathless out, but at the time he had been disoriented by the sudden wash of warm sun over his face, and the ignoble shock of finding himself once more bound to a body with no forewarning, and the opportunity to marvel at the hilariously utilitarian structure of the Halls of Mandos had blithely passed him by.  
  
Instead, he'd done what he imagined every hapless idiot did ten seconds after reembodiment: he looked down at his hands, turning them palmside up, then over, then pushed up a sleeve to inspect an arm, then the other. It was a little like waking up after a long dream, suggestions of a life lived an age ago flicking by in quick succession in the back of his mind like the medical diagram plates Gildor had let him look at as a child, too distant to be worth any real worry. A book he could leave closed away, full of loose-leaf notes stuffed into the binding that he was tempted to pull free to read, knowing he'd find only the burden of a story he already knew by heart. It took some doing, but he resisted the temptation.  
  
His first breath, as far as he could tell, had been a gasp; his second was a much more dignified slow inhale, a concentrated effort to feel to the fullest extent the alien movement of his chest expanding, the brush of his shirt over his skin, the slow descent of his eyelids in an involuntary blink. When it seemed all was as it had been prior to his unfortunately-timed immolation, all limbs and appendages and unseen organs accounted for, he turned his attention to the world stretching vast in every direction all around him again.  
  
Námo was tall and inkblot-dark in his robes when Ereinion had turned to ascertain his current whereabouts, perhaps as a last offer for counseling, but he had never sought the advice of conveniently-located Valar before, and he saw no reason to begin then. Their business was concluded. He chanced a step forward, felt the heel of his boot sink into the soft waving grasses beneath him, and began the first day of the rest of eternity.  
  


* * *

  
  
Reason told him there were probably resources available to elves who found themselves in a body and out of contact with family, or hard money, and he was in no hurry to take advantage of those resources. It took Ereinion only an hour or so of following the vaguely downhill main street he'd dazedly taken up for want of anything else to do to find a good headspace around the gnawing threat of overwhelm; there were inns and notary offices and he could smell the baker's quarter on the lazy westerly that had followed him out of Mandos, and despite himself he found the entire ordeal almost comically ridiculous. Aman was pure, a land of ever-spring, free of the blemishes of Arda Marred, but at the end of the evening it was a place like any other he had been in the span of his life, subject to the needs of the people who lived in it. He passed the white stone facade of a copyist's shop—the Nando sweeping the shopfront spat into a bush. _Just like home_.  
  
He laughed to himself, deciding to save himself the trouble of worrying about how he looked and assuming the cluster of elves taking a meal together under the broad, shady overhang of a laburnum within earshot of him thought he was properly unhinged. If any of the passers-by who hurried around him recognized his face from any history books and biographies that had made it over the sea, they were discreet about it—a selfish desire to take advantage of the anonymity stayed him from any further attempts at figuring out _where_ exactly he was, though, as he moved towards the end of the high street and down a narrower, less cosmopolitan part of the city, he found himself with less and less to eavesdrop on.  
  
A horse probably would have been useful, but he thrust a hand into the pocket inside the deep green surcoat Námo had gifted him and found it bare of even the saddest clump of lint that might be put towards procuring one. Since he was staunchly determined to avoid doing anything that might resemble worrying about anything, he filed the thought away for later perusal and let the city at his back fade out to nothing.  
  
“They're saying the conclave ran late.”  
  
“Ah? Has the Lady Anairë called another recess? Elwë won't like that, I don't think.”  
  
Better said than done, apparently. Ereinion made a token effort at indifference, but the couple—consisting of a woman he might have been inclined to assume was one of the old silver-haired Eluwaith, but here it was impossible to tell, and a man who spoke with the thick-tongued lisp of the unblooded Amanyar—were a few paces ahead of him, a prime position for eavesdropping. _These concerns will be yours again soon_ , some dangerously invested part of him insisted, but that, too, was quieted by the wry look the lady gave her companion, her gravid grocery basket precariously balanced on her hip. _Perhaps sooner rather than later_.  
  
“Give the Unwilling all the lands east of Oromë's plains and be done with it, I say,” the man muttered, wiping his hands down on the rough broadcloth of his pants—a farmer, Ereinion thought, his mouth slanting upwards. “Elwë might moan, but if they cannot abide Arafinwë _or_ Ingwë, best let them to themselves.”  
  
“You have such a head for diplomacy, mellon, you might consider a bid against Lalwen's seat next term,” the lady said with a laugh as high and clear as a bell—Ereinion wondered, slowing himself to put more distance between himself and the pair, if her friend knew she was laughing at him. To the youth's credit, he flushed to his ears and mumbled something Ereinion much preferred to pretend was out of his hearing.  
  
“Círdan won't be much use, but he'll try. Elwë must feel terribly outnumbered in Tirion.” The Sinda shrugged her free shoulder, and Ereinion studiously did not think about the uncomfortable pressure suddenly perched on his sternum. His heels were beginning to hurt. How long had he been walking? “Ah, me. Us lesser folk can only sit back and appreciate the theater of it all. Are you coming to dinner tomorrow? Ningil's sister docked yesterday, I don't think my lady has stopped pacing a moment.”  
  
The swain stumbled through the rest of the conversation with as much charming ineptitude as Ereinion was learning to observe out of the very young elves who had obviously never left Aman, whose lives had only tangentially touched a world marked by evils they would only ever hear about secondhand, but as the sun began to sink towards the horizon with a reluctance that frankly kind of worried him, he pointed his boots downhill again and let the distant worry break over him and recede out like a high tide. Tirion would be there whenever he felt like rejoining that particular circus whether or not he was there to supervise it himself, after all.  
  


* * *

  
  
Círdan had always had an annoyingly efficient homing instinct, which was why, five days after his untimely release from Mandos, Ereinion had given up all pretense of tucking himself away from society at large and resigned himself to the inevitable.  
  
The sand along the shore was bright and clean, though bare of the gems he had been told studded the beaches at Alqualondë, a relic of a time when the disparate groups of the Eldar were less inclined to the petty squabbling that featured in nine-tenths of the gossip to be found through Aman. Necessity had forced him to take up lodging with the Teleri-mix family of an obliging fisherman, but if he was at all tempted towards any feelings of guilt, his host had assured him that such arrangements for the newly-reembodied were not uncommon—part of the culture of the Amanyar for time immemorial, which, all things considered, Ereinion had to admit he found endearing.  
  
The fisherman's—Amarchallon's—young child had followed him out to the beach when he'd risen to greet the dawn that morning, but had disappeared with a throng of other like-aged miscreants soon after, following a line of crabs scuttling around the shoreline. It was just as well, because as soon as she had crossed over the peak of the last sand hill within eyeshot, he caught sight of another figure slowly descending the incline, the aggressively blue sleeves of his tunic rippling over his arms in the sharp morning breeze. There was a clear glass bottle hanging from one hand and a wicker hamper balanced on his free elbow, both very promising things. Ereinion's mouth split into a grin, but he resisted the urge to hail his pursuer over, instead untucking his legs to stretch out over the silk-smooth sand, an advertisement of his intent to stay, a tacit invitation.  
  
“I know you're dying to hear me demand to know how you found me,” he said, almost as soon as Círdan was close enough to hear him over the insistent swell of the sea as it reached again and again for the treeline. In the new wealth of morning sunlight, Ereinion thought he looked as he ever had—tall, broad, his teak-dark hands pockmarked by old scars, the concerns of all of Eä carried on his wind-chapped shoulders. Círdan made a valiant attempt at a smile, but the long years of endless, violent storms had eroded that natural impulse, too, and only the echo remained of it in his noble, solemn port the second after it fled his face.  
  
Very suddenly, Ereinion knew his thoughts had gone back to Barad-dûr, another shore, black basalt beside a lapping ocean of magma. He coughed. “But I won't ask. I've decided. I'm through living for pleasing everyone, and I start here. Gone is the man who took up the heirlooms of the Noldor and singlehandedly charged a heavily-armed Maia with only a broken spear and too much empty bravado. You look upon a happy vagrant in training.”  
  
“You tried to open a tab under your father's name at a taproom two days ago,” quipped Círdan, turning over a shoulder and dismissing the two retainers who had, blessedly, had enough sense to keep back out of earshot. When they had gone over the sand hill again, Círdan moved abreast of Ereinion and pulled himself to sit, his gaze distant again as he went through the motions of untying the linen cover over the hamper, from the depths of which he procured two stout, ceramic cups. Deciding that taking up the other half of the errand was in his best interests, Ereinion wrapped a hand around the neck of the wine bottle, twisted the cork out, and poured it until the cups were nearly brimming out before any judgments about morning-drinking could be given voice. “That kind of news does not escape the notice of the locals.”  
  
Círdan did manage a grin then, but it was half what Ereinion knew from his well-behaved adolescence, and quickly hidden when he lifted his cup. The gulf of years Círdan had had to live while Ereinion slept beneath the damp gray eaves of Mandos was something he all at once felt very acutely, all of the concerns he had resisted thinking about pushing for attention at the forefront of his mind. The Shipwright of Middle-Earth would not have left it on so slight a temptation as homesickness; either the gradual attrition of elves on the Far Shore had finally allowed him to move home, or he had been called back. Perhaps there _was_ no Arda anymore, or perhaps it had fallen into enemy hands and the green-gray bank of Forlond was merely a parched black scorchmark now, but even then, he suspected Varda herself would have had to take him by the arm and pull him over the sea.  
  
It must have showed in his face, because Círdan looked sidelong at him and shook his head. A peer's gesture, not a father's. Ereinion had had a father, Círdan had not wanted to be a father; the system had worked out well, though as Círdan lifted his head again to watch an auk patrol the shore a few paces off, he felt an altogether too familiar pressure at his throat. At least _that_ had made the transition from first to second life with him. He forced it down, averting his focus into peeling out the rest of Círdan's peace offerings: salad and cold ham, neatly boxed together, and totally eclipsed by the superiority of the wine.  
  
Everything about his life had changed, but it was nice to know Círdan's greatest virtue as a reliable expert on good alcohol was eternal.  
  
“Would you preferred it if I started a heated philosophical debate over whether the lady Elwing flew to Eärendil as a swan or a seagull instead? I had to get your attention somehow.”  
  
His misguided attempt to get a drink on his father's dime had not, at the time, been so noble a cause, of course, but he'd hold on to that truth until Círdan suspected otherwise. Which he did, exactly a half-second after the words had left Ereinion's mouth, both of his impressively silver eyebrows lifting skyward.  
  
“You made an active attempt to get everyone in this town to believe you were a madman so I would find out Námo had released you,” he repeated, employing the selfsame strategy Ereinion had learned to hate, as a young diplomat, where he did not so much come out and say he thought you were full of shit so much as put that conclusion out on display for one's own benefit. It had been an effective deterrant whenever Ereinion had tried to get a charmingly indifferent Elrond to agree to a hostile coup.  
  
“Ah, no, I didn't,” he admitted, laughing and picking at a piece of pork skin to ease the heavy pool the wine made in his belly. “But I did find out from various obliging gossips that you had a shipyard here, and that you were bound for Tirion on business with the High Council. I had not decided whether to accost you here or not. I haven't decided anything, as a matter of principle.”  
  
“Except that you are currently a vagrant in training.” Círdan's answering laugh was low, a single quiet breath that ignited a terrible heat in Ereinion's core. “I have always thought the life of a ship cat would have suited you better.”  
  
“Ereinion Gil-galad: king, harpist, mouser.” Did he dare to hope the stability they had thrown together just now was strong enough to support another foray into the neutral territory of what lay on the other side of tomorrow? Círdan's propensity for making himself miserable when no one else was doing that for him already cautioned him against making the attempt, but, Ereinion reminded himself, such risks were necessary when one's future was at stake. And besides, Círdan was _very_ good at combining being unhappy as a sport and being breathtakingly attractive when the stars aligned right.  
  
He cleared his throat. “I have heard about the lady Anairë's conclave.”  
  
True to expectation, Círdan exhaled a long, tired sigh. Routs (thankfully only verbal) between the Amanyar and the Úmanyar being gradually reintroduced to Aman, whether by ship or through the gates Ereinion himself had left less than a week before, were apparently common enough that the strain had tried the united councils of the High-King at the feet of Taniquetil and Finarfin's lot. Ereinion rather thought such issues were things better left to the greatest common denominator of the Valar, but with only the peephole of public opinion to view the problem available to him, he kept the thought to himself.  
  
“Yes, I am due for Tirion. In fact, I should be en route now, had I not been waylaid by more pressing business. Finarfin will cede the necessity of letting the Umanyar govern themselves, though I think they are inventing half the issue. Most are not simply of one kindred or the other—though the makeup of the High Council might not reflect that. They think that I as a neutral third party will be able to untangle this knot, but they delude themselves. This could have been solved an Age ago.” Slowly, like his bones had turned to iron, he lifted a hand, rubbed the white-gray stippling of his beard, took another drink of his wine. “But I am very tired, Ereinion. I want my house on the shore, my quiet corner of nowhere. I have so little left for an uphill battle, and there are several right in front of Finarfin, even if he doesn't see them yet.”  
  
As much as he didn't want to, even if he didn't have the right to anymore, Ereinion remembered that feeling well: it was born in the latest hours of the night, nurtured in endless council halls, practically canonized in war, a constant feature of his ongoing internal conversations even in his most private moments. And Círdan had seen so much war: men faded to nothing for a fraction of what Círdan had lived.  
  
But that was not the road he wanted their reunion to go down. He took a drink, half-grinning pertly into his cup.  
  
“I'm 'more pressing business'?”  
  
Círdan coughed, tried to salvage his dignity in another draught of wine, but found his cup empty. Instead, he commandeered a bright red wedge of tomato from the unseen inside of the hamper he'd brought, considered it for a long, appraising minute. “You could interpret it that way, I suppose.”  
  
“I intend to.”  
  
He wanted to provoke something out of him, even if he wasn't sure what it was. But if Círdan had been tempted, he was content to fix his companion with an exasperated look, pouring himself out another cup. “Where are you staying?” he ventured instead, manfully refraining from pointing out how unwelcome he'd made himself in the local inn in the wake of the bar incident.  
  
“Up the hill, under the auspices of a kind local family. I think they didn't believe me when I gave them my name, but they're good enough to humor me.”  
  
“I'm glad someone is.” Haltingly, Círdan reached for the wine bottle again, corked the open top. “If you... need a second step, Ereinion...”  
  
He really was good at that, Ereinion thought, draining the last of his wine, too. “I could say yes.”  
  
“I would be more than happy if you did. I can keep a better eye on you from my side.” Another auk called somewhere out of sight; Círdan unfolded himself to stand, ignoring the sand plastered to the hem of his tunic. “Iluvatar knows these poor people have suffered enough.”  
  


* * *

  
  
Vagrancy as a lifestyle choice really did appeal to Ereinion, though he contented himself with aiding in Amarchallon's daughter's reading lessons and haunting the forest of soapbark that lay behind their pokey little wind-battered house when the novelty of reembodiment kept him from sleep. For a week there was no worthwhile news to be had on the summit in Tirion, and though he had never been of the opinion that no news meant good news, it was enough to take a daily trip of about five miles up the annoyingly blue shore to where, a second of Círdan's had informed him, the Shipwright made his off-season home.  
  
It was no sprawling estate—it looked a bit like the townhouses he had seen further inland, small, scarcely furnished, its sward as neatly manicured as Círdan's beard—but Ereinion liked to sit against the gates and watch the play of natural sunlight over the marble walls, the rosy veins in the foundations like heartlines in palms, fantasize about the quiet nothings to be done within. Círdan could be happy here. _He_ could be happy here, he thought, even if the very thought of a sustained period of happiness made him intensely suspicious.  
  
On the fifth day, he packed his meager belongings (all things picked up on the beach: a carving knife, a half-whittled piece of driftwood, some loose coins) and bid Amarchallon's family goodbye. His daughter had practically ransomed his own leg to him on the promise there would be letters written, the fact of her lingering inability to read notwithstanding, and there had been much sighing and wet eyes, as if he was headed for Taniquetil and not a stone's throw up the coast. All the same, it was nice to be liked for things other than birthrights and military victories and really good midsummer parties, and Ereinion departed them with the pleasant weight of regret in his heart as heavy as the sea glass in his pockets.  
  
Círdan's housemaster received him without any questions, installed him in a room that apparently abutted Círdan's, and very pointedly made note of the rather large wardrobe and washroom now available to him. Ereinion wanted to forgo both out of spite, but bathing without the amenities the elves of the larger cities were used to _had_ been something of an ordeal, and by evening he'd taken a meal, scrubbed off the smell of wet sand that had sunken into his skin, and finally set the now very broken-in outfit that had materialized with him his first day out of Mandos. The plain brown jerkin that replaced it was even less worthy of Círdan's housemaster's approval, but it was all very in keeping with his new resolution to cause as much harmless offense wherever he went as was possible, so he took it in stride and occupied his hours aimlessly wandering the grounds.  
  
The hotbeds behind the estate were full of pale green melons dozing in the noon warmth—normally he would have suspected it was late autumn, but there had been no indication that Valinor responded to the whims of the sun beyond an incremental difference in temperature, which he found vaguely unsettling—and there was a mossy deer leap on the very edge of the grounds, long battered by the sea winds. Nothing about it harkened back to Lindon, even despite the shipyard bustling with sailors in the tiny harbor just upshore of them, but Ereinion was beginning to think that may have been by choice.  
  
“He's got to start thinking about retirement,” he informed the little white cat who had accompanied him on his morning stroll through the anterior gardens, slowed to accommodate her six paces for every one of his. Suspicion told him she had been one of the ship cats who had defected her post on Círdan's initial stop through, because she couldn't be trusted to remain in one place long enough to finish out a conversation. He compensated by being concise about any worries he entrusted to her, even if his efforts went unappreciated. Story of his life, actually, but Ereinion could admire someone who did what he had been too callow to do in Arda, abandoning all responsibilities to become a wandering mercenary, foe of bug and vermin alike. “On second thought, so do I. Do you think Gildor made it over? I'm sure I could join his band of traveling miscreants as a bard, wander Aman at Araw's side with sundry birds and beasts as companions. Not bathe for weeks at a time. Go through life curing hangovers with newer hangovers.”  
  
The cat paused to bat at a moth that had alighted on a squash leaf.  
  
“There is the small matter of my being terrible at the harp, yes, but being inept at something never stopped anyone else from actually doing it,” he agreed, cupping his wide hands over the moth and gently guiding it out of harm's way before the cat tried to mount a second assault. “Turgon, for example, was terrible at taking gentle reminders from certain well-meaning Valar. Beleg was terrible at applying common sense where his best friends were concerned. _My_ faults are practically amazing by comparison.”  
  
For a moment he remained kneeling beside the tilled row, offering a hand when the cat pushed herself under his knee. It was a trap, he knew, but he hazarded a long stroke down her back anyway, cautiously watching her claws flex.  
  
“Círdan has no faults, which is exactly why he is in Tirion and I am not. I don't know why you let a good thing go to waste, cat, but I hope you have some idea of where you're going. I certainly don't.”  
  
“...Are you lecturing my cat, Ereinion?”  
  
The long shadow that had crept into his periphery had not, apparently, been Círdan's housemaster making a quiet assassination attempt. Ereinion gathered the cat into his arms and pulled himself back up, ignoring the clawed paw she sent into his shoulder in retaliation.  
  
“We were having a very illuminating talk.” At this, Círdan only nodded very slowly, perhaps long past any serious attempts at assessing his charge's sanity. “All your employees are so world-wise. The only counselors of mine I could ever trust were Elrond and Erestor, which must say something about me.”  
  
“And what luck they were trustworthy enough to merit their own seats here, or the council might have dragged on another three weeks,” Círdan sighed, exasperatedly reaching to peel the cat out of Ereinion's arms so she could scamper off to wreak havoc on the local wildlife. Much of his hair had come free of its braid, and there were spots of sea-spray still damp on his cloak; Ereinion wondered if Housemaster had come running down the walkway to inform him he'd been taken hostage by the cat-stealing madman currently sleeping in the bedroom beside his own before Círdan had even been able to change his boots.  
  
“Ah, Elrond finally made it? Poor fool.”  
  
“Thankfully by way of ship. And with two mortals in tow.”  
  
“If you're trying to entice me to return to civilization with wild tales like these, Círdan, it won't work. Your cat and I have a pact.”  
  
Círdan's mouth slanted into a humorless smile. It might have been genuine, but it was clear whatever had transpired in Tirion had sapped the meager strength that had sustained him the day they had first convened on the beach. Ereinion, too, felt the stirrings of sympathy pain take him, one hand reaching to undo the massive brass clips holding Círdan's cloak closed. It had not been the fashion, last he'd been in a position to take notice of such things, but the brackets at the back of both worked in much the same way he remembered them. The mantle, a light, practical affair, fell neatly over his arm, warm where it had lay as close to Círdan as Ereinion wanted to be.  
  
“They miss you,” he said at length, unmoving, the flyaway strands of his hair around his temples almost transparent in the full light. “I missed you. For a time I thought perhaps you might choose to stay in Mandos, like Aegnor.”  
  
Ereinion wanted to grin, but the strength to curiously eluded him. “My place has always been here.”  
  
Círdan's grimace didn't quite take him by surprise, but he felt a stab of guilt at seeing it manifest over his face all the same, realizing only now, so belatedly, that he was still holding Círdan's arm in one hand. He debated pulling away, and gamely resisted it. The days of answering to his better impulses were gone.  
  
“I thought constantly of what I had not done, what I could have done. Ereinion, the war—“  
  
“No.” Perhaps it had been naive to think Círdan would take his hint to leave the issue alone indefinitely. Círdan had that strength where few others Ereinion had encountered in the not-unimpressive span of his own life did, but he willed back the bitter sting of being prompted to relive the memory, knowing it had not been a conscious decision on Círdan's part: ash in his eyes, the smell of old blood, fire, fire, fire. “Stop. I made that choice, and it was a damned stupid choice, but it was mine.”  
  
He'd closed the remaining hand span's worth of distance between them, his fingers tightening imperceptibly, perhaps as an unfelt reaction to the unpleasantly visceral memory that seemed all at once so close he could reach behind the tissue-thin veil of time and live it again, and so distant it had to have been the lingering imprint of a play he'd seen, a picture he'd painted. Círdan's mouth had firmed. Ereinion could see a thin line of very light skin where a long-maintained sunburn was beginning to peel just under his collar, and despite himself, he laughed.  
  
“It wasn't noble, Círdan, it was desperate. The repercussions are mine, too—and probably to a lesser extent Elrond's, though I hear he did as good a job of taking up my spot as anyone else could have, under the circumstances.” If this placated Círdan, the reaction he'd wanted to look for was gone in the time it took him to blink, his expression glassy and unreadable, replete with echoes of ancient guilt as carefully and lovingly tended as his garden. “I intend to right that particular wrong, if it suits you. Probably even if it doesn't. I'm still half sure the swimming lesson you let Gildor give me the day after my majority was half an attempt to kill me.”  
  
“And you still never learned not to jump into things with both feet.” Círdan exhaled, but didn't move to push them apart, looking all of his age for the briefest touch of a moment. Ereinion gripped his tunic, hauled him forward, slanted their lips together before he could talk himself out of it. Perhaps Círdan had been able to see it coming; Ereinion searched for the feeling of his body drawing up, the cord of muscle in his arms as relaxed as Círdan could ever be.  
  
It was tentative for all of a moment, and then Círdan seemed to rally, brutally closing a hand knotted and pitted by years of labor around Ereinion's and pressing it between them. He'd waited out all of those years alone, Ereinion thought, holding as desperately and making no move to pull apart even when they pushed closer, Círdan's knuckles in his sternum and his fingers going slightly numb—how much must it have _pressed_ on him for _centuries_ , looking over the Gulf and being reminded of how horribly Ereinion had gone in the end, how long it would be before he let himself consider Valinor as a viable option.  
  
Ereinion rolled his forehead into Círdan's, sucking in a serrated breath. The cloak he'd pilfered had dropped over a squash plant, but Círdan kicked it away and released his (frankly very painful) grip on Ereinion's hand, vacillating between resolve and something less so. Understanding very acutely that his success was contingent on not giving Círdan enough time to stage a retreat, Ereinion kissed him again, rolling his tongue over the line of his bottom lip, the tension leaving him again when Círdan answered him in kind with a brief nip.  
  
“You do that like you do everything else,” Ereinion breathed, half to congratulate himself. “Where would I be if you were not so expert at all things, Shipwright?”  
  
Círdan, bless his heart, looked as if he might roll his eyes, had Ereinion not very strategically rolled the backs of his knuckles just above the highest visible point of the seam in his leggings. A full lifetime of honoring the nobler half of his nature had not prepared him for how rewarding instant gratification could be, but, he reasoned, he was a quick study, even if he had not been the most enterprising king. He watched Círdan's jaw tighten, and then it was too late to brace himself when Círdan took him by the waist, wrenching them both down behind the respectable barrier of melon beds and lemon scrub.  
  
“I have an appointment with the lady Galadriel tomorrow,” he murmured, disappointingly articulate when Ereinion unceremoniously hooked two fingers behind the placket of his hose, encouraging the laces open with minimal effort. “Ereinion, I should be—“  
  
“I'll go in your stead.” Ereinion shrugged, wrapping a hand that was not quite as callused as he remembered it being around the length that lifted to meet him halfway. Círdan's sharp, uneven inhale invigorated him. “She still likes me, I hope. I've run your staff quite ragged in your absence, you could do with a bit of a sabbatical.”  
  
It was its own reward that Círdan _did_ roll his eyes then, a second before Ereinion decided that Eä, and all its inconvenient lesser concerns, could fall to someone else's lot. 

**Author's Note:**

> (●△●✿)


End file.
